shook and trembled

22:8 shook and trembled. The terrible scenes described in II Samuel 22:8-17 go far beyond even any poetic license that David might properly use to describe his own personal deliverance from his enemies. They do, however, make sense in connection with the great earthquake and mid-day darkness at the scene of Christ’s crucifixion. But they seem to go even beyond this, for the physical convulsions experienced around the cross were only a foretaste of those that will soon occur when “He ariseth to shake terribly the earth” (Isaiah 2:19). In that great coming day of judgment, God “will shake the heavens, and the earth, and the sea, and the dry land” (Haggai 2:6). Similarly, in the distant past, there was a worldwide cataclysm at the time of the great Flood.

David’s experiences thus were a retrospective type of those experienced by Noah as he was saved through the trauma of a world first filled with violence, and then covered with the deep waters of judgment. As a result, both Noah and David become types of the incarnate Creator, testifying both to “the sufferings of Christ, and the glory that should follow” (I Peter 1:11). We see, therefore, in these verses not only David’s deliverances, but also those of Noah in the past, Christ at the cross, and all the saints in the future.